1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for preventing propagation of hardware viruses in a computing system.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern computing systems can take on a variety of form factors and can frequently be augmented by adding attached components. One example of such a computing system is a blade center that includes a plurality of blade servers. Such computing systems may be vulnerable to a hardware virus that causes hardware components of the computing system to be damaged. In the context of a blade center, a hardware virus can include a damaged connector on the midplane of the blade chassis such that any blade server that is plugged into that slot will become damaged. For example, a bent pin on the midplane connector can damage, or infect, the corresponding connector on any blade server that is being plugged in to the damaged connector. Likewise, any blade server that is infected with a hardware virus can damage the midplane connector when the damaged blade server is plugged in to the midplane connector. In such a way, the hardware virus can spread to other hardware components in the computing system.